The Beginners Guide To Wellness (Getting Started 101)
Eating is to live, but since we eat a variety of foods everyday, knowing which foods are potentially risky can help, especially those that are not regulated under the FDA food list, which includes produce, seafood, egg, and dairy products, and that being aware of this helps us to take these foods under consideration, not necessarily avoiding them, as they are still part of a healthy diet, but knowing what to do when it creates an adverse effect when we eat them.
Preparing vegetables
A healthy diet must contain leafy greens and these foods are usually the basic ingredients in salads, like lettuce, spinach, cabbage, chard, kale, arugula, endive, escarole, to name a few; however, if these leafy vegetables are not properly prepared, such as washing them well with clean and washed hands and using separate cutting board, they can be a source of food contamination which can lead to food poisoning and other forms of stomach illness. Before leafy vegetables are sold in the market, they can be susceptible to contamination from presence of manure, dirty water rinses or unwashed hands.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) strictly regulates the preparation of meat products, such as chicken, beef, pork, before they are sold in the market because of the foot and mouth disease that they can cause to human health, on top of other illnesses, of which chicken is considered in the top risk of being easily contaminated among meat products with beef coming in second. Treat uncooked meat and poultry as potentially contaminated and make sure to cook them thoroughly, such that you clean first the surfaces that meat has come into contact with and follow FDA guidelines on food preparation.
Proper cold storage for seafood
Seafood is well appreciated from their tasty freshness and, therefore, to maintain their freshness, they need to be kept cold from the moment they come out of the water and be stored in the freezer at 40 degrees Fahrenheit, because if they are not properly stored, there is a possibility that the fish can be contaminated by scombrotoxin, which causes flushing, headaches, and cramps, and this on top of other risk such as mercury contamination in tuna fish and if seafood is stored at temperatures above 60 degrees Fahrenheit, it can release a toxin which cannot be destroyed by cooking.
Because tomatoes are most often eaten raw due to the fact that its sweetness is best tasted when they are raw, this food habit can allow the risk of tomatoes carrying food-born illness, therefore, handling properly tomatoes before eating raw or before cooking should be observed to avoid the multiplication of bacteria, such that the proper procedure is as follows: wash hands for 20 seconds with warm anti-bacterial soap, before and after preparing fresh produce; wash tomatoes under running water before eating or before cooking.
Wash and scrub your potatoes
The cause of potato-related illnesses is through cross-contamination, transfer of germs from one type of food, usually meat, to another, such that if the meat is already contaminated with germs, like Salmonella, E. coli, the potatoes mixed with the meat will likely be also contaminated; therefore, to remedy this risk, freshly scrub your potato and cook them properly.
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